Further to this thread started by Bryan Holty: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-scsi&m=114306885116728&w=2 Here is the reworked patch again. This time it has been tested with a program provided by Bryan. The patch is against lk 2.6.16 . Changelog: - when the sg driver is unable to setup direct IO, free that scatter gather list prior to falling back to indirect IO Signed-off-by: Douglas Gilbert Doug Gilbert